Dave Eggers: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Simon and Schuster, 2000
This magnanimous autobiographical novel represents a summation of the particular reflections and complaints of the 90s. It is reflexive, self-enclosed, on the verge of stream-of-consciousness. It is a story of deeply personal inner suffering and angst, something that 20-somethings of this particular time period can relate to.
It is a hallmark of this generation to hold nothing sacred, and have no regrets about tearing everything down, not anticipating that anything will need to be built up again. There is no moral center, and without that, all friends and family are fare game, even Toth, his younger brother, the closest to him. The center of the story is that which revolves around the illness and death of both parents, evolves into the aftermath of that period and into his life with his younger brother whom he must then care for, the relationship with the now far-flung sisters, and eventually the career life. As auto-b’s go, it’s actually very acute writing, incisive to the extreme (you’re heard the phase “too much information”). Eggers follows Kerouac in many ways with his breathless monologue and expose, exploiting the reality-show mentality in text, and slicing off a piece of American cultural pie in the process. It’s good writing, some of the best I’ve ever read. But it is ultimately unsatisfying, maybe disappointing is the word. While at all points in the book there are brilliant expose’s, flurries of wisdom and insight, great moments of comedy, so much so that I choked once, there is also rage, and senseless abandon, a throwing of rocks at an imaginary police line of authority composed of the circumstances which brought so much pain into his life.
Bitter, driven by anger and fear, especially fear of death and denial of meaningful existence, Eggers takes out his confusion of purpose in words, and in a last desperate plea is asking us to kill him. It is at last a juvenile rampage about the author that refuses to grow up and get past his past. A picture of the 90s generation of teens and early 20 somethings that are sometimes called generation X, this portrait is at least accurate in that it reflects the angst of having no future, no heroes, no worthwhile past, an empty culture, and is swamped in media-perpetuated and flaming bouts of transpositional blame and cynicism.
Eggers hits notes of truth, at the expense of mature sensitivity and sensibility, preferring to vent his personal anxiety on the reader, while, with great bits of humor persuade us he is right in hating himself. We hate ourselves by the end of this tiring, albeit personal, soul-winning, almost sentimental, rant (he has the writing skill not to give way to sentimentality, but rather takes those moments that are beginning to list that way and turn them into the comedic). The look in the mirror, or in this case Lake, brings us to the end of a man, ergo the end of ourselves, and we are wondering why someone does not just pull the trigger instead of allowing us to go on into any kind of painful ending, preferring instead to be able to toss frisbees forever in the sun.
Eggers’ clever and often profound insights into the human nature and analysis of thoughts on death and dying, and his surgical dissection of the human condition under stress, ,would lead one to believe that he is a social scientist at heart, and definitely not a conformist. However, one is inevitably led down the same empty path as the author, proving that he is a persuasive authoritative voice, and also at a loss as to what to do next. If you’re into heavy angst, guilt, and giving voice to your own inner frustration with living, this is a book for you.
Agitatus.
